Transition
by ridexc
Summary: Just how did a rookie weasel her way into his heart? A little Swarek character study. Now psycho-analyzed all the way to the end of season three.
1. Chapter 1: Under the Radar

_Just a little peek into Sam Swarek's brain. No plot to speak of. This takes us from the beginning of the series, through Andy's relationship with Luke – so first season, basically. Encourage me a bit and I might do some more. _

_Don't own Rookie Blue, but I do enjoy identifying the Toronto neighbourhoods where they shoot. _

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He can't really nail it down to a day, or a moment.

No thunderbolts or anything. There was nothing about it that was all that sudden.

It's not like he hadn't noticed her right off the bat. In his defence, it was hard not to, seeing as in their first encounter, she'd slammed him into the pavement none too gently, like some over-eager Rottweiler puppy - and destroyed eight months of hard work in the process.

The dominant initial emotion, if not outright anger – because god help him, look at her, all pony-tailed, doe-eyed, determined and clueless, like a thousand rooks before her – was irritation.

Mixed with relief at finally being able to walk away from an op that was pretty much going nowhere fast, and was making him start to miss, well, everything. Evenings warming a barstool trading insults with Ollie, and cleaning Jerry out in poker games, and the occasional dalliance with that girl who worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario and wore those goofy striped leggings (and really tiny thongs). Being up on the cases everyone was working, and all the watercooler gossip. And having permission to call his sister. Just, you know, being in the loop. Felt good.

So yeah, if she was the catalyst for his being welcomed back into the fold at 15, even if it meant Anton Hill had to slip through his fingers … then okay, so be it. All kinds of fresh faces had invaded the squad in his absence, and hers wasn't the toughest of the bunch on the eyes, but it was his prerogative as a senior officer to ride her ass for her newbie error (that one on the first day, and all the others that followed), and he took a certain amount of pleasure in doing so. Remembering, but never confessing to, how he'd been torn a new one a couple of times himself when he was as wet behind the ears as she was right now. Payin' it foward.

When Boyko put him back on training officer duty, and she started riding with him, he really couldn't hang on to the irritation for very long. She was just so damned young and earnest, and he could see the gears turning in her perky little head. That stubborn set to her jaw that said she was going to prove her worth if it killed her - it was pretty irresistible.

But honestly, after the second day she'd ridden with him, when she followed him out into the parking lot of the Penny, still in overachieving mode, with her Bambi brain and those pouty pink lips going a mile a minute, the impulse to get close to her was really just that, an impulse. It's not something he had plotted beforehand, not something that had occupied his brain all day in the squad car, just sort of a, what-the-hell, she's cute and she smells good and it's been a while, sort of impulse that had him leaning in and almost locking lips, before a slender hand on his chest stopped him and a curtain of hair hid those big brown eyes as she ducked away in apology.

It really had been more his move than hers, but she was the one apologizing, and he let it slide because it really wasn't the best idea anyway. Training officer and all. Not that he hadn't played fast and loose with that once or twice before. But McNally, well, she was just going to overthink it, and who needs that on a Saturday night? He'd just re-entered his life. Last thing he needed right now was complications.

So he lied and said she wasn't his type.

That little hand sure had felt good on his pecs, though.

So was that briefest of contacts what had turned him into someone he barely recognized, the night she appeared at his door during the blackout, all wild-eyed and amped up by the events of the day and in desperate need of solace, distraction … feeling something ELSE? He wasn't sure. Maybe it was just how emboldened she was, launching herself against him all zero to sixty like that and plundering what initially, for him, was a mouth caught hanging open in surprise. Hard … er, difficult not to come along on that ride. She was instant sensory overload, hunger and need exploding in his brain from some rock under which they'd evidently been hiding for a little too long. One minute she was plastered up against him in the doorway, and then she was in his bedroom and he didn't even know how they'd gotten there, and her hands were leaving trails of fire everywhere, and so were his, and she was making those amazing little gasps and whimpers that had him just about losing it like a zit-faced teenager.

And then, of course, the lights came on and it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Pretty hard to look at her the same way after that, for all he shrugged it off with those off-the-cuff dismissals. "Was what it was", his ass. After that, he would catch himself staring at her like a slack-jawed moron when she was otherwise occupied, the flashback reel playing in his head triggering uncomfortable consequences. Seriously, there are few things _less_ sexy on a woman than a police uniform, work boots, and a Kevlar vest. And yet, she could be standing in front of him in the Timmie's lineup doing nothing more provocative than ordering a green tea and a strawberry whole-grain muffin, and he'd find himself dangerously, inexplicably turned on.

Yup, keeping it classy, Sammy boy.

But the notion of actually pursuing her didn't really cross his mind at the time. Or if it did, he dismissed it immediately. Again, there was the T.O. thing, which was a major stumbling block - not that he was a colour-inside-the-lines guy particularly, but some rules just make sense. Plus he didn't want to be _that guy_, the guy who preys on a different rookie every year. He was certainly wearing no halo in that regard, but he didn't want to get a rep as the squad's worst hound.

It wasn't like he had any trouble attracting female companionship when he was so inclined. It wasn't like she was the be-all and end-all.

And then she got herself hooked up with Luke, that tool of a pretty boy who didn't know a good thing when he had it, and somehow, the whole situation started to become kind of a torture chamber for him. Because he just couldn't stop watching her out of the corner of his eye. Somewhere along the line, she had started to demonstrate some pretty good cop instincts on the job – really good, truth be told, even as she also demonstrated a certain magnetic attraction to trouble. And somewhere along the line, his irritation had morphed into attraction, even admiration.

Affection was in the mix too.

Which brought on some uglier stuff, stuff he didn't recognize in himself. Like a persistent desire to slam Callaghan's head into a wall. Or at least to tell the guy he didn't deserve his good fortune.

Thing was, he'd never really had much of an opinion about Callaghan one way of the other, prior to McNally. The guy was a good solid cop and honest enough, with reliable instincts as a detective. Not one of Sam's close buddies, probably never would be, but a stand-up guy as far as he knew. The hostility he suddenly felt was a foreign thing. He didn't want to analyze what it meant.

But he really thought he was keeping it together fairly well, on the whole. He bit his tongue when she gushed about their new place, about how sweet and considerate Luke was, about her five-year plan. He was supportive. He did nothing that could be construed as being too familiar with her. Teased her a bit, but never crossed the line. And he swallowed hard, a lot, as he watched her giddily nesting …. Not really knowing when his brain had started adding, "with someone else", and not entirely clear on why.

Apparently he wasn't hiding it all that well, either. Should have known he wasn't fooling Shaw, who was way more observant than he let on. But Shaw wasn't the only one who called him out on it … he was just the least subtle of the bunch. And the one Sam was mostly likely to listen to.

So when Ollie shook his head and pursed his lips and said, "Sammy, you got it bad," it kind of solidified what Sam already knew to be true, but hadn't quite admitted to himself yet.

When the hell had that happened? And how had he let it?

Also. When had he become such a coward?

Had he woken up one morning and decided she was his world? Nope. Hell, he didn't even know what it was, exactly, that separated her and every other female rookie he'd ever encountered, so he sure as hell didn't know when he'd started putting her in the 'one of these things is not like the others' category.

He just knew that Ollie wasn't wrong.

And he'd started to protest, make some slightly off-colour innuendo about McNally that showed he didn't consider her anything more than a mildly interesting piece of tail, but Ollie just cocked an eyebrow at him that told him he was wasting his breath. So Sam closed his mouth, conceded the point in a monosyllable, and stared into his scotch.


	2. Chapter 2: Time and Space

_Here's a little more from Sam's cranium. Sorry this has taken me a while to post … I wanted to let it sit and simmer for a few days. Your comments (and encouragement for more, if you like it enough!) most appreciated. _

_Disclaimer: I'm a Toronto girl, but I don't own RB. I do get amused at the mix of real streets and fictional ones, though! Ain't never been no "Route 9"…._

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The day Andy announced she was engaged, it was almost a relief.

Totally off the market. Done deal. So he could stop … well, frankly, obsessing … right?

Kind of like that trip to Sudbury, which he'd dreaded because it was just way too much uninterrupted quality time in a car with McNally, and he was at a point where he was starting not to trust himself. He'd been short with her - he'd always been able to turn on the charm, but the flip side of that wasn't all that pretty. She'd called him out on his seriousness, not getting, of course, that his self-control was pretty much hanging by a thread, and that various scenarios in which he, she, and the hood of the cruiser were the major players, were on some tormenting random repeat in his head.

When that jagoff of a prisoner transfer had knocked her flat on her ass and sprinted off into the woods, it had sparked not just exasperation, but actual rage, in him. And it was a relief. He'd been walking the knife-edge for a while and it actually felt fantastic to let something else, something primal, flood his system and take over. It obliterated all the other stuff, and he didn't want to let it go.

He managed to continue being royally pissed off for a good hour as they stomped through the wilderness in pursuit of their escapee, but of course he couldn't sustain it while she was looking like a kicked puppy. Three seconds after they'd apprehended the bastard Sam's brain was again entertaining the thought of chaining him to some distant tree while he pressed Andy back down into the leaf litter and peeled off that damned vest …

This, though. This was way more permanent. This should banish all this stupidity from his head. Time to stop doing this idiotic push-her-away, get-sucked-back-in dance he'd been doing, time to stop trying to interpret her every word and gesture for signs that she might actually be into him, time to just stop. She just wasn't an option.

He thought he'd made a pretty good show of sincerity as he wrung her hand and congratulated her, but scarcely 30 minutes later he found himself incapable of not being an asshole, when he asked her if she was pregnant.

So, okay, a rock on her finger wasn't instantly changing the way he reacted to her.

And he was still getting sucked in, through the whole mess when Callaghan got shot and then, scant weeks later, when he heard, like everyone else in the squad, that the relationship had imploded thanks to Callaghan's little trip down memory lane with his ex.

For all McNally claimed she liked to live by the rules, being around her was getting decidedly messy.

The rage towards Callaghan became contempt as Sam watched her struggle to process the end of her little self-scripted fairytale. He half-expected her to cave and take him back anyway, and he braced himself for the big squad-car rationalization speech about working it out. Instead she surprised him with her strength, by moving out and moving on. His admiration for her went up another notch, even as he squelched an irrational urge to be the rebound guy.

That wasn't what he wanted to be for her. Which scared the hell out of him.

When he let his guard enough down to feel it, he couldn't deny that she just plain made him feel good. Something about that Pollyanna streak of hers endeared her to him, as much as, or maybe because, it contrasted with his own cynicism. She believed the best of everyone. She was the kind who passed around birthday cards for everyone to sign, fed other people's cats, looked after her drunk of a dad even he was at his lowest. Sam knew enough about Tommy McNally to know that Andy had been through some stuff when she was a kid. How she came out of that an idealist, he couldn't imagine, but it was kind of amazing.

They had moments when everything was easy, comfortable. Yeah, she was still green, but she was becoming one helluva cop. When they were working together, it was seamless. He was starting to trust her instincts, and she was starting to finish his sentences. It was … well, like working with Ollie, only with flirting. Which he couldn't help, and she didn't seem to mind. She might even have been flirting back. In an alternate universe, it would have been an easy segue to something more. But it wasn't so simple, and something – lots of things – kept him from stepping off the cliff. Not the least of which was that he hated the possibility that she'd end up looking like she slept her way up the ranks. Or maybe that was just a colossal rationalization of his own?

The overall effect was that he felt like he'd been chewed up and spit back out again, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could do it. There'd been that night when he'd left her to deal with an accident victim while he went off in search of a missing kid, and came back to a whole swarm of fire trucks and EMTs, and smoke rising from a burnt-out wreck. No sign of McNally. His heart had stuttered to a standstill as he hollered her name.

And then she was in front of him and miraculously intact, and he'd gotten lost in those lethal Bambi eyes of hers and almost, almost forgotten that half of the rest of 15 Division were potential witnesses on that dark, wet street. She was smiling softly at him and making her own contribution towards closing the distance between them, and he knew before he got there exactly how she would taste, of coffee and smoke and just Andy. His whole body was humming with the proximity and the possibilities of her. All he had to do was lean forward just another half an inch and erase all the uncertainty from her mind. And he'd chickened out, he'd chickened out at the last second, and that smile had turned just a little sad as she pivoted away from him, holding eye contact long enough for him to mentally kick his own ass the entire way home.

With any other woman, he wouldn't have doubted by now that the feelings were mutual. But this was McNally, so he was walking on eggshells. He wasn't sure which scared him more: whether they'd start something only find out that it was too soon, she wasn't ready, and he really was just Rebound Guy. Or whether they'd start something and she'd find out way too quickly that he wasn't serious boyfriend material. Which he was pretty sure he wasn't. Previous attempts had not exactly been spectacularly successful.

Either way, it was bound to go down in flames, wasn't it? And she didn't deserve that. Especially not after Luke.

A change of scenery sounded healthy. Time and space. Guns and Gangs was still stalling, so when another undercover op got dangled in front of him, Sam did the mature thing.

He bolted.


	3. Chapter 3: Permission

_Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and the kind words! Hope my version of Sam continues to ring true for you. Here's Sam the adrenaline junkie, getting a little dose of karma …_

_Usual disclaimer: Don't own Rookie Blue or Toronto, for that matter. Visit there a lot though. (Also: Very minor crudeness towards the end of this chapter, but you're big girls and boys, you can take it.)_

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_"Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? Ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! Man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!"_

-_**Moby Dick**_**, Herman Melville**

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All that stuff about being undercover serving as a good time to reflect? Not so much, Sam thinks.

Truth is, he's far too busy immersing himself in his role, memorizing the exact nature of his target and assessing the degree of danger he's volunteered himself for. His senses on hyper alert, his nerve endings on vibrate. He remembers now just what he likes about UC: it's exhilarating, it's all-consuming, and it's exhausting, which is frankly welcome, because when he finally collapses on the bed at night he's too fried to think for even one more second, and falls instantly to sleep. Though the dreams are dark and vague and troubling, and most mornings he can't exactly claim to feel – or look – rested. It's okay, it suits his assumed persona. Bad-ass drug dealer with some demons hiding under the bed.

Sam throws himself into the intensity of playing a role. He approaches it like an actor. Writes a backstory for his character, fills in the details, figures out what hockey team JD would root for, what colour socks he'd wear, how old he was when his dad was sent to the Kingston pen. Keeps it close to the truth as he'd been taught by his mentors, the better to keep it real, but the whole time he's working to make the veneer as authentic as possible, the cop underneath is picking away at the problem like it's a big fucking tangled ball of Christmas lights or something. Tugging away at all the little knots and snarls that are Jamie Brennan. Learning his weaknesses. Learning how to take him down.

He likes the dichotomy. Taking on a new identity – there's something freeing about it. He's a tightrope walker, working without a net. When he's undercover, he has license to say and do all kinds of shit that Sam just wouldn't.

And that, of course, is when McNally comes charging back into his brain like a bull in a china shop. The night he was Gabe and she was Edie, and there was no-one he'd rather have had playing his girlfriend when the adrenaline was pumping.

The pep talk he'd given her in the car? Delivered as a mentor, but she didn't miss the subtext. Nor did she prove unwilling when he got close to her. No explanation, no apology needed when Gabe nudged noses with his lady love and then roughly – if way too briefly – claimed her mouth with his.

It was the first time he'd dared since the night of the blackout, and damned if it didn't all come flooding back. For about three seconds, he gave himself the authorization to pour out all the heat and the longing he could express in the time frame and the circumstance, knowing that she could explain it away as role-playing. He'd succeeded in tearing himself away - mind on the job, Sammy boy - but noted with some satisfaction how her pupils had dilated and her cheeks had flushed.

Gawd, she was a natural at this. Not to mention hot. How much of her response was acting, and how much was him and her? He didn't know and wouldn't ask. But that momentary permission to do what _Sam _was evidently too paralyzed to do – he had to admit, it was a rush.

For about three weeks, the master plan seemed to be working. He was back in a headspace which, if not exactly serene or relaxing, was in his comfort zone. He thrived on the secrecy, threw himself into the job, and didn't spend a lot of time agonizing over what she might be doing on a Saturday night, or what she'd felt when he abruptly disappeared. He was making progress with Brennan. He'd managed to sell himself well enough that they'd gone out for a beer and a game of pool a couple of times – opportunities that Sam knew were invaluable in terms of assessing his target's vulnerabilities. Brennan was letting him in, beginning to trust him. Also, Boyd was pleased – not that Boyd's approval was all that high on Sam's priority list, but it did make things run smoother.

But inevitably, the nights he spent alone in that cover apartment started to give his mind too long a leash. 135 chapters of _Moby Dick_, and nothing on TV but lame reality shows in re-runs … eventually that sort of thing leads to introspection, which as far as Sam was concerned was rarely a good thing. He needed to stay immersed in his character as much as possible, couldn't afford to be second-guessing himself. Which is what thinking about McNally did.

Some nights, sprawled on the couch and staring at the ceiling, he was more than a little disgusted at his own cowardice. What the fuck was wrong with him, anyway? He'd never had any difficulty with women, never been known not to strike while the iron was hot, so to speak. So what the hell was he doing here, alone? Well, he'd certainly been the architect of that scenario … no-one to blame but himself.

And Herman Melville was doing absolutely nothing to mitigate the feeling.

One thing he was becoming reasonably sure of: time and space weren't doing much for him, either.

Simplest solution: stay out of the apartment as much as possible. So finding himself at that dive bar, the Alpine, often in the company of Brennan, was getting to be something of a habit. A beer or two to help slow the thought process down, watching the game on the ancient TV over the bar … simple stuff. Guy stuff. A chance to let his guard down just a little. Well, as much as he could safely do that in the presence of his target. Forget that UC had started to feel like a huge mistake.

He turns around in the bar one night, and it's almost like he knew it was going to happen. Like one of the great inevitabilities of the universe has just dropped itself on his doorstep.

There she is, eyes as big as saucers when she sees him, and admittedly Nash's eyes aren't any less bugged-out. He kind of enjoys the moment, actually. Can't help grinning and flashing the dimples.

He realizes why they're there right away. Must be the cop's version of _rumspringa_, the night when the rookies all get set loose on an unsuspecting city. Three and a half million people, and somehow, she finds him.

Doesn't mean he's going to get reckless. He has to keep his cover intact, and the next look he gives the two of them warns, "Don't blow this."

Christ but Andy's a sight for sore eyes, though, in that simple denim shirt and the sensible boots. Something in his chest constricts, and lower down something else hints at twitching to life, too. So distance really does make the hard-on grow fonder.

On top of that, he suddenly feels about a hundred pounds lighter. This might be fun.


	4. Chapter 4: No Going Back

_So now we get to the chapter I was really looking forward to writing. I think you all know which one. I could have veered seriously into smutland here, but I wanted to stay true to the voice rather than changing gears and getting descriptive about the action. Good call, or bad ….?_

_Thanks again for sticking with me, and all the usual disclaimers apply._

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_**"How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair."**_  
- _Moby Dick_, Herman Melville

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He thinks, not for the first time, that she is _so_ much braver than he is.

She's standing there, literally in the lion's den, Jamie Brennan eyeing her in a vaguely predatory way from the next barstool over, and she's offering … what, exactly? To step right into the big cat's jaws, if it means that she and Sam can steal a couple of hours inside his alternate reality.

She looks small and uncertain in that big down parka, and yet she's standing her ground.

It's the first moment that he's really positive that she wants him as much as he wants her. And something huge and warm and tingling starts to spread through his veins like a virus.

But his brain is a traitor. Or too well-trained, or something. When he opens his mouth he knows he's going to pay one helluva price for protecting her. Sending her out of the cave alone might mean she'll live to fight another day … but he knows with absolute certainty that she will also never forgive him.

And that he will never get another shot.

He hopes she can read the depth of the regret in his eyes as he shuts her down. He does it as gently as he can, but with an undercurrent of warning that she is seriously underestimating the degree of danger she's in.

He thinks maybe she knows, though, and doesn't care.

She doesn't let the devastation in her eyes reach the rest of her face, but he can tell he's just stuck a knife in her ribs by the clipped way she says, "Then I'm gone," and disappears back into the thinning crowd.

Just about then all he wants to do is curl up in the fetal position under the bar and let it sink in that he has finally lost her forever.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath that he hopes Brennan can't see, but his 'boss' isn't missing a thing. He's studying Sam – well, JD – like an entomologist examining a bug, but with magnanimous amusement.

"We have business, you and me," Brennan says with a wry smile, and Sam rallies enough to put his brain back in the game. "Yes, we do," he agrees, a little too emphatically, as if that's justification for having just shattered her mighty heart.

What Brennan says next is … unexpected. "We can catch up on that business tomorrow, or the next day. Or the day after that.

"A woman like that doesn't knock on your door every day."

If Sam hadn't read the case file, didn't know exactly what the bastard was capable of, he might have actually liked Brennan. In that moment, anyway.

He gets off the barstool so fast he knocks it over, and the sound of Brennan's laughter follows him as he bolts for the door.

He has probably missed her. She's probably long gone. He searches the alley with wild eyes, and then his heart stops for a second when he sees her standing stock-still, hunched a little against the cold, or maybe because she's choking back tears.

As he puts a hand on her shoulder, all he can think is, damn the torpedoes, I want this. She wants this. We want this.

And her face ripples from defeat and humiliation and produces a still uncertain, bashful smile, as if she knew on some level that he'd follow her to the ends of the earth if she asked. Which he's pretty sure he will.

It's a bone-chilling four-block walk to his cover apartment, and she doesn't say much, afraid that security cameras might be catching them on the way or that Boyd will be cruising by in a black sedan. Which is ridiculous, but still, she's not really sure how these deep cover assignments work. She's being careful, trying not to blow it.

He doesn't say a lot either, apart from basic directions. Doesn't trust himself to. "It's just down that way. The red brick. Hang on, lemme get my keys." His voice comes out deep and sandpapery. It's bitterly cold, but he's just about breaking a sweat, his fingers tingling and warm just from guiding her home by the elbow.

She's so close to him in the doorway, her eyes searching his face for tells, but they don't touch. Everything feels like it's on hold for another few seconds. He ushers her up the stairs ahead of him. She's still swamped by that damn parka and he can't see much of anything of her except her hair trailing down to her shoulder-blades … and it doesn't matter, it's just like the navy blues and the vest, because his mind fills in all the blanks and she's the sexiest thing he's seen in forever. His mouth is dry, and all he can think about is quenching his thirst. She will quench his thirst.

Inside, the first thing he does is unplug the cameras and the mics. Sorry, Boyd, strictly need to know.

And as he's clutching her coat, his brain makes one last, hopeless bid for rationality. "I'm going to call you a cab. It's going to take you back to the station and you're going to get into your uniform," he tells her, like that's not the absolute last thing in the world he wants or needs.

He's not very convincing, and she knows it. And lord knows he doesn't have much chance of shaking McNally when her mind is made up.

She has enough courage for both of them.

And so, he surrenders. No going back.

Maybe he's still having trouble processing that she's right here, in front of him, and that she is finally his. _His._ Because it takes him a few seconds to will his hand to touch her face. There's this hesitation, too, before their lips and tongues connect … because it's really going to be real when he does it.

He's expecting sparks, but the reality exceeds all expectation. Tidal wave is more like it. The scent and the feel of her, the way her breathing catches and her eyes get heavy-lidded …. Ohhhh, he could lose himself in this. Jesus. Slow down, Swarek. He needs to take it slow. The build-up has been …. seriously, all these months, and if he's not careful he's gonna flame out and leave her wondering what all the fuss was about.

He needs more skin contact. Sam ditches his shirt and starts working on the buttons of hers, only to find she has beaten him to it. He needs to feel every inch of her, the contrast between the toned arms and legs and the insanely soft swell of her breasts making him absolutely crazy. So he sweeps her up in his arms and brings her to his bed, which at any other time would have felt like a stupid cliché, but tonight it doesn't.

He knows that by six a.m., she'll need to be back at the barn. But right now, it feels like they have hours and hours stretching before them. To do nothing but explore, and react, and pleasure, and get inside each others' skins. It's like some wide open vista, free of crackling radios and protocol and …. Luke Callaghan … and all the other baggage.

He wants to learn all the sounds she makes. What makes her tremble. What makes her scream.

He's not good at the words. Never has been, and even if he was, it's not the time. Last thing he wants to do is terrify her with lunatic declarations. So he just …. shows her. With every nanogram of honesty that he can muster. Which, as it turns out, is a surprising amount.

There are plenty of women he's had sex with, in his lifetime. There have been a couple with whom it was making love. But this is the first time he has worshiped someone.

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Afterwards, he realizes he had never thought about _afterwards_. That potentially awkward silence when both parties realize that the nature of their relationship has been altered and no-one knows where to go from there. He's been there, done that, with co-workers once or twice. Not pretty.

But this is Andy, and so it's just Andy, soft and naked in his arms as he traces lazy patterns up and down her back. He doesn't think he has ever felt _relief _quite as sweet in his life.

They banter, and laugh, and it's all so sleepy and easy and amazing that once again it crosses Sam's mind that he barely recognizes the guy he is with her.

In a good way.

The only downside being that the clock is ticking down, and she's going to get up soon and leave only a cold draft, in his bed and in his heart, when she walks out the door.

He's not ready to let that happen yet, and she feels so fucking good pressed up against him that it seems he's on record recovery time. The kiss builds from tender to passionate, and he's quickly finding out that she can give as good as she gets. This time, she climbs on top, and he gets to watch her face as she rides him until they both shatter.


	5. Chapter 5: Ask Me To Stay

_Hi again. Thought I'd forgotten about this one, didn't you? Nope, just got trapped in a holiday season vortex for a while. Seems I'm still not quite ready to deal with the dark stuff, so for one more instalment let's dwell on the McSwarek hook-up. Just for a leeeeetle bit longer. Mmmmm._

_And I know I'm not the first person to toss in a gymnast reference, but I couldn't resist._

_Disclaimer: I've been stopped by the Toronto police five times in the past month as they do their holiday R.I.D.E. program checks (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere), and I keep having to squelch the urge to ask them what they really think of Rookie Blue. Which is not mine. _

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"**And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye."** - Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_

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He knows it's a bad idea even as he's dialling her number. Incredibly stupid, even.

But the assignment isn't really going according to plan. Sam really hasn't been able to gather any new info in more than a week, and he's getting twitchy. Things at the warehouse have been strung as tight as piano wire, but nothing seemed to be coming down the pike to break the tension. Boyd has been on his case, and he's just about on his last nerve. Even though Boyd's not wrong, because if Sam is honest about it, his mind has been …. elsewhere.

Tangled in the sheets with a slim brunette with Bambi eyes and, um, impressive flexibility.

(So much so that he'd remarked on it, and she confessed with a conspiratorial grin that she'd been on provincial gymnastics teams all through high school. Even been short-listed for a Commonwealth Games team.)

(It explained a lot.)

He's too much of a pro to completely lose his focus, of course. He can compartmentalize, and he's been doing this way too long to ever underestimate the likes of Brennan or his associates. He's not about to get careless. But part of him feels like he owes himself a little reward. A brief break from all the _sturm und drang_ in the air. A night to unwind and drop the façade. Just be Sam. With her. Which, really (while he's on this honesty kick) is the best version of him.

Part of him figures that if can just see her one more time, he can get it out of his system – for a while, anyway - and then get back to making something happen on this op. (Though he hasn't _seriously_ believed that for months now, maybe years. He isn't getting her out of his system anywhere in this lifetime, really. And certainly not after the soul-shredding sweetness of that night last week.)

So mostly, he thinks that he should just try to wrap all of this up as quickly as he can.

He's got somewhere he'd really rather be.

Funny how, that night, he'd felt like they had all the time in the world, but by the time he had to usher her out the door into the frigid pre-dawn air, he felt rushed. Cheated. Like they hadn't even begun to explore each other the way he wanted to.

He just wanted _more_. _Wants_ more.

He resists and resists, but it's no good. He's dialling.

And it's a good thing he wasn't planning any polite preliminaries, because that's something Andy is clearly not interested in. The wild woman from the night of the blackout is back, launching herself at him in the doorway with a hungry moan, and if he hadn't already been ramped up just at the thought of her coming up the stairs, well, that certainly would have done it. It was no fluke, he realizes … she's voracious.

And that is _so_ all right with him.

For the next few hours, they do very little talking. After all, she has made the effort to come all the way across town. He wants to show his appreciation. He is very, _very_ thorough.

Not that his brain has completely ground to a halt or anything. There's a little voice from way, way in the back of his cranial auditorium that says he's never willingly let himself dive in so deep before and not ended up panicky, like he was physically drowning. Come up sputtering and backpedalling and retreating to the shoreline.

Sam keeps waiting for that feeling, but it doesn't come. He can't quite believe it, but she feels like safety to him, and it's already …. changing his priorities.

He doesn't really know yet whether that's a good thing. Never saw himself wanting all the normal, common-or-garden variety stuff that guys like Ollie wanted. Mortgages, anniversary presents, peewee hockey, taking the dog to the vet. Never saw the appeal. Maybe he still doesn't, but god, _with_ her feels so much better than _without_ her.

It occurs to him that she'd be laughing herself silly if she knew just how much overthinking was going on on his end …

He just wants to live in the moment tonight. So yeah, maybe he's deliberately hammering his better judgement into a pulpy mess on the floor when she murmurs, hours later but still slightly flushed from their exertions, "Ask me to stay" …. And he does.

Over the next 24 hours, of course, he's going to replay that call a couple of thousand times in his head. And he knows, _knows_ he should regret the _fuck_ out of it. But he can't quite bring himself to.


	6. Chapter 6: Belly of the Beast

"**And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way."**

– Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_

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He isn't sure how many hours he's been here. His head is pounding, he can't process anything clearly, and his whole body aches from having being twisted in an unnatural position for hours.

Not to mention it's fucking freezing in …. Wherever the hell he is. His toes went numb a long time ago.

So basically there are two things keeping him conscious at this point: a white-hot ribbon of anger aimed at Donovan Boyd, the _handler_ into whose hands he had stupidly put his _life_ and who clearly had screwed him over, big time (whether accidentally or deliberately, Sam most definitely intended to find out if he lived to tell this particularly sorry tale) … and a crackling, electric current of fear over what Brennan had done with, or to, Andy.

There's guilt in there, too – guilt that he brought this upon himself, brought it upon _her_, with his recklessness. There's colouring outside the lines, and then there's just taking stupid, stupid risks, and he's getting a huge karmic kick up the sphincter for it right now, far surpassing anything that Frank and the rest of the white shirts will be doling out should he survive to experience that little closed-door meeting. But there doesn't seem much point in beating himself up about it right at the moment, because Brennan is doing a more than adequate job of that already.

Waterboarding. Unoriginal, but simple and every bit as effective as the academy textbooks and the lectures had assured him it would be. How reassuring. The terror's pretty real, his whole body thrashing in the restraints, the musty smell of the old farmhouse and the sound of Brennan's mocking voice burned into his brain. He's trying to keep his mind focused on giving Brennan something the sadistic asshole wants to hear, something that will make him stop this, but he can feel himself slipping under, coherent thought evaporating like mist in his fingers. Welcome darkness closing in.

Until Brennan swings a hammer at his knuckles.

The explosion of pain does at least have the effect of bringing some clarity. All he can think of to do at this point is goad the bastard into losing his temper. Fortunately, goading is something he's good at. And it works: Brennan drops the hammer, goes for a right cross at Sam's jaw, and stalks from the room. With no means to break his fall, Sam goes down hard, but it's worth it, because the chair gives way and he's able to wrench an arm free.

It's only seconds till Brennan's back, though, feels like seconds anyway, and then he's cast in some sort of real-life version of Mortal Kombat, knowing he's favouring his hand and his knee and that with his head swimming he's not the most formidable of opponents. Anger and fear are keeping him on his feet, barely, but pain and exhaustion are beginning to win out over both of those. Sam's going down, and he knows it, and he's out of time …

It's Shaw's voice which penetrates the fog in his head and saves him from having Brennan's callous chuckle being the last thing he ever hears. As Sam is lying on the floor trying to suck some air back into his deflated lungs (and concluding that he has a cracked rib in the process), he thanks the universe once again for the unassuming guy who's his brother and as good a cop as you could ever hope for.

Turns out he can still bear weight on the knee, so he waves off most of the help and makes it out of that hellhole with a minimum of assistance. His heart is still thudding like a sonuvabitch, and the satisfaction of seeing Brennan wrestled out ahead of him isn't really doing it for him. Mostly, what he manages to feel is tired.

She's there when he emerges from the house, in one piece but with terror and shame and desperation twisting her features. He locks eyes with her as he stumbles off the porch, and they stare at each other for a long moment. But he really can't think of anything to say. He's going to need to some time to sort that out.

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It already feels like the longest fucking day of his life, and a night of tangled sheets and slick tongues and one quite spectacular back walkover (she was showing off), already seems like a lifetime ago. But there's still miles to go before he can sleep: being checked out and stitched up at the hospital, followed by a not exactly warm and fuzzy debriefing from Frank, with a promise of a much longer and uglier one, with the details of his suspension, the next day. Somewhere in the middle of all that Ollie manages to bring him up to speed on how Andy has blown their little tryst wide open, though mercifully his friend neither acts surprised nor disapproving.

The same will probably not be said of the rest of the squad. Jerry, in particular, looks like he has a big lecture on stupidity brewing, and it's not like Sam needs Barber to outline for him the nature of the clusterfuck when he can i.d. it perfectly well on his own, thanks. He ducks out before Jerry can get a head of steam going and heads to the locker room to see if he had the sense to stash anything in the way of clean clothes in there before he left.

Slowly his head is clearing, helped immeasurably by the fact that Oliver had detoured to a Timmie's on the way back to the barn and scored them a couple of turkey clubs and industrial-sized double-doubles. Caffeine deprivation, that's all it was. (Right, Sammy.)

"You okay to drive?," Shaw asks when he sees Sam fishing out the spare set of keys from his locker. Sam just nods and says, "All good. I just need to get home and crash for, like, a week."

"Not a week, my friend. I'm going to swing by and make sure you're still breathing tomorrow, okay?"

"As long as you know enough not to show up empty-handed. Or before noon."

The suspension is expected and he's just going to take it on the chin. Absolutely no point in getting pissed about that. And strangely, though he keeps waiting for the anger to start welling up about McNally, keeps expecting to feel like all of this is her fault, the blame feeling just isn't showing up for the party.

Huh.

Sam's not sure whether maturity is creeping up on him or whether he's just so damn crazy about this girl that he'll forgive anything and everything, but he's kind of owning the clusterfuck. And where once he would have just filed the whole experience under 'more trouble than it was worth', all he can think of now that he's fed and caffeinated and medicated and coming down from the adrenaline, is whether she's okay and whether he can catch her before Traci or someone gives her a lift home.

He'd kind of like to explore that whole 'normal' thing.


	7. Chapter 7: All I Wanted

_Welcome to Angstland. Your reviews are welcome._

_Rookie Blue ain't mine._

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"_**There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense **_

_**but his own."**_  
― Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_

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By the time he gets home from what is probably the strangest disciplinary hearing he's ever had (or heard about, really) – a weird combination of praise for a job well done, and tearing him a new one for his "conduct" – she's already gone.

Turns out he _can_ blame her for something after all.

He can blame her for going off half-cocked. Act first, think later. It's probably her biggest flaw as a cop, for all her instincts are generally good, or at least motivated by good impulses. You can't always be led around by your heart and your guts … sometimes you have to engage your brain.

And as far as guts go, Sam feels like he's just had his stomped on.

Jesus, an e-mail? A text? "Off to Temagami to earn a merit badge, ta-ta for now."

Okay, they weren't quite like that. But still, it was colder than he'd expected from McNally.

So maybe they should have done some talking that night. Maybe he should have given her some idea of what to expect at her hearing the next day, what they'd probably hand down in the way of specifics on her suspension. And the difference between the letter of the law, and the spirit of it.

But neither one of them had really felt up to talking. As hard as he had tried to shrug off the whole fun-and-games-in-the-farmhouse thing by giving her that lopsided, devil-may-care grin, he was pretty shaken as well as pretty damn sore all over. And she was still vibrating with worry, for him, for her job (he wasn't sure which was the stronger), and she reached for him as if he were made of glass, unsure of where she could put her hands without hurting him.

Not that they'd let that stop them. But their lovemaking was careful and tinged with regret, and afterwards he felt as if the real goal for both of them had been to bring on something resembling a restful sleep.

Gawd, but she had felt good in his arms as they'd curled up together, neither one bothering to pull any clothes back on. For Sam that just would have induced more wincing, anyway. Her skin warm and smooth, her heartbeat steady. His brain had finally, mercifully, shut down as he'd buried his nose in her hair, and he had slept like the dead (with the help of one more painkiller that she had insisted he take before they turned out the lights).

They'd both been so exhausted that they very nearly didn't get up in time for their respective, separate hearings in separate rooms the next day. It had taken Ollie pounding on the door to rouse them. So really, there hadn't been any time to discuss it then either – they'd just thrown clothes on, grabbed the coffees Shaw was proffering with the briefest of acknowledgements, and run out the door.

He'd never really gotten a chance to explain to her that "no contact", if it was handed down (and he suspected it would be), wasn't something anyone was going to be checking up on, that it was really just a way of reinforcing the notion of future discretion. Sam knew, in any case, that if Frank tried it on him that he'd just retort that his private life was none of the force's business – and _he_ knew _Frank_ knew that was the truth.

Sam never dreamed she'd just pack her paddle and head to the land of rocks and trees for three fucking months.

It's stuff like that, that brings him right back to thinking that maybe getting into a whole relationship with McNally isn't the best idea.

He says as much to Shaw a few nights later, as they're warming their usual barstools at the Penny. By then, of course, he's found out that the whole wilderness-retreat idea had been Nash's, and that the cabin Andy was currently holed up in, belonged to Nash's ex's family. McNally hadn't talked to _him_ – she'd talked to _Nash_, and apparently the consensus was to get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as humanly possible. Which is what happens when rookies get together and neglect to consult anyone with actual experience, evidently.

Oliver, unused as he is to dispensing relationship advice to Sam – because Sam has never asked before, never having had (in living memory, anyway) a relationship worth any significant amount of discussion – is being a pretty reasonable sounding board. Given that the bruises on Sam's face are still a spectacular display of purples, yellows, and greens, he's also buying, which is a bonus.

"So there's not even a phone up there?," Shaw asks.

Sam shakes his head. "Just a hunting cabin, I guess, woodstove and a dock and a canoe, not much else. Oil lamps, for all I know," he adds with a snort.

"I tried her cel a few times. Traci said the reception's pretty lousy up there."

"She might not have anywhere to recharge it," Ollie nods. He's still got the sympathy face on, and Sam's grateful once again that, if his friend has any recriminations he'd like to dish out about the whole Andy thing, he's so far keeping them to himself.

"So are you gonna head up there, Sammy?", he ventures.

But Sam's feeling a smidge bitter about the whole deal by now. "Fuck that," he growls. "If she wants solitude, she can fucking have it."

Ollie looks ready to deliver the "she's the best thing that ever happened to you, you moron" speech, but given Sam's mood, he thinks better of it.

Truth is, he's nearly gotten in his truck and lit out on the 400 North a few times now. Despite being totally uncomfortable with the whole backwoods thing. It's not like anyone in the squad would actually give him grief over it. Off the map, out of mind.

But yeah, he's pissed, and that, so far, has kept him from following her. It seemed awfully easy for her just to take off, and he's beginning to wonder how much of it was real anyway. Maybe they weren't on the same page after all. Maybe he's the only one who's …. invested. Maybe it's all just fucking doomed, so he might as well just let it implode sooner, rather than later.

And it's all made worse by the fact that, a few nights ago, the nightmares started. Just as his body had begun to heal, his mind had started cranking out the blow by blow (literally, Sam thinks) of Brennan, only in the dreams he can't see Brennan's face, he just hears the voice and feels the hammer come down on his knuckles, and the room is pitch black and it starts to fill with ice-cold water, and before Sam knows it he's floating face-down, still tied to the chair, and he wakes up thrashing and bathed in cold sweat.

Alone.

He can't help feeling that if she'd stuck by him, if he had her to hold every night, that his brain would have found some peace and he wouldn't be having to relive this shit every goddamn night. Or, at least, if the nightmares had come, he'd have been able to talk it out with her. Instead of the division shrink. It's not that Sam objects to the process of having to go for some counselling after a tough UC – he actually thinks it's a good idea. It's just that 15's shrink is pretty useless, as shrinks go.

But he doesn't have a lot of options, so he goes to the mandated appointments, and he talks about the op, and what he doesn't talk about, is Andy.

He starts getting postcards from her, heartfelt little postcards with a sentence or two about what she's doing (ziplining? Skydiving? What is she trying to prove?), and more about how much she misses him and how she's counting the days.

And he doesn't get in his truck and drive north.


	8. Chapter 8: Fighting the Feeling

_And here we have conflicted Sam, fighting the feeling and losing big-time._

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"…_**For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."**_  
― Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_

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He is so not this guy.

The guy who _needs_ someone to chase away the nightmares. The guy who sulks when she's gone. The guy with the abandonment issues. The guy who loses objectivity, lets his thoughts be consumed …

He never wanted to be this guy, he doesn't know how the hell he became this guy, and it's gonna stop.

He never got a chance to tell McNally that his suspension wasn't quite as harsh as hers was – it was a successful op in the end, after all, though, okay, messy – so it only buys him six weeks off the street.

And back on the street is where he needs to be.

It feels right, being back in harness, doing the day-to-day cleanup of dime dealers and domestics and common-or-garden-variety dirtbags. Traffic stops and taillights. Convenience store hold-ups and coyotes chowing down on backyard Chihuahuas. Dementia patients wandering through the 'burbs in their slippers. He throws himself into it with as much energy as he can muster. Leaves it all out there on the field.

Riding with Epstein? Well, it's a bit like spending the day with a Jack Russell terrier. Annoying, but you can't hate him for it. He has the same sort of allergy to silence she does, though the stuff that comes out of Epstein's mouth furrows Sam's brow in a whole different way. Not necessarily a good way. Some of it makes Sam wonder what planet the kid was raised on.

Frank's merciful, and occasionally lets him spend a shift with Ollie instead. It's good shooting the shit with Shaw. They generally agree on where to eat lunch. And his friend only brings up McNally once, the morning he has clearly been consulting a calendar:

"So, Sammy … McNally due back soon?" He says it uber-casually, looking out the side window and popping a Timbit into his mouth, but he's not fooling anyone.

Sam gives Ollie a quick, hard, leave-it-alone glare from the drivers' side of the cruiser.

But breaktime is apparently over because Ollie's not leaving it alone. "It's, what, coming up on 12 weeks now, right? Heard anything from her?"

Nope, not unless 27 postcards count. Not that he's telling Shaw that.

"Should I have?", Sam retorts. Discussion over yet? No, Shaw's going in for the kill.

"I dunno. You guys … well, we all thought it was about time, you know? Temporary setback, my brother. Nothing you can't fix."

Sam just grimaces. He doesn't know whether he wants to fix it. He's been marinating in that sense of desertion for long enough now that it's familiar and comfortable. And what's _not_ comfortable,_ not_ familiar, is how he is when he's with her. The more he thinks about it, the more terrified he gets.

Which has done absolutely nothing to stop the craving.

Gawd, Ollie's relentless today. "Sam, you guys are good together. Really good. I'm just saying …. Don't fuck it up."

So then, Shaw should be proud of him the next day when he's heading out the door for a solo shift, and his phone vibrates with a text.

"Flight 43 from North Bay, Island airport at 11:10. Any chance of a lift?"

So she must be back in cel phone range then.

She follows it up, "Can't wait to see you."

Oh Christ. It sweeps over him like a physical ache. He knows he'll come running. That's what he's become. And he hates himself a little for it.

Shields up, Captain. Let's just be the grown-up, keep it cordial. But it's hard, _really_ hard, keeping that cynical stone face when he sees her coming down the escalator, all tanned and mosquito-bitten and giving him that megawatt smile. His resolve is wobbly, at best.

True to McNally's magnetic attraction to trouble, of course, the whole fucking day goes south within minutes of her getting in the cruiser. She gets to her final hearing, at least, gives her earnest speech, gets re-instated, which has her glowing with evangelical determination to make it all right. She's always been a fixer.

But he can't resist crushing her. "All you wanted was to keep being a cop. And all I wanted was you."

It's probably the most honest thing he's ever said to her about them, and though he sort of tosses it off, the rawness of it stops her in her tracks.

She finds another way home.

And he's driving to his, except that her damn suitcase is in the truck. And that ridiculous canoe paddle.

He knows she's so much more by-the-book than he is. He gets why she left. He'd gotten it all along, really – he just hadn't forgiven her for it, despite the postcards, which he's read over every night, hanging on to the little endearments she's written like a lifeline.

So he's got her luggage, and suddenly the sulking doesn't feel like much fun anymore, and he finds himself heading to her condo.

Still, he's going to make her work for it. He needs to know she's serious. He can't … he can't go there again if she isn't. He needs to know they're on the same page. She's going to have to prove it.

He gets inside the door, and before he knows it, he's caving, and staying, and he tries for a few desperate last seconds to hang tough, but she's _right there,_ inches away from him, and all that crap just melts out of him as he leans in to kiss her softly.

Soft turns to needy within seconds, and then her limber frame is straddling his lap, she's running her tongue down the side of his neck, he's harder than he's ever been in his _life_, and he thinks that he's just going to have to make peace with being that guy, because he can't function without her anymore.


	9. Chapter 9: Normal

_Not that this is a song-fic, but if you'd like a soundtrack to this chapter, I wrote it listening to Paul Simon's "Something So Right", which is a great expression of the general befuddlement of men. _

_Thanks for continuing to read._

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_**See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them."**__  
__―__Herman Melville__,__Moby-Dick_

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Poker night with the guys. It feels good. Therapeutic. And it's going to feel even better at the end of the night, when he's cleaned out all of Jerry's cash and possibly Ollie's as well.

He hasn't been to one of these in a while. He and McNally have been … monopolizing each other's time. Sometimes at his place, sometimes at hers, but generally speaking, they've been turning up at work in yesterday's clothes more often than not. They've both taken to keeping at least a couple changes of unmentionables in their lockers. Just in case.

It's not like he hasn't been in this place a time or two before, when it's all new and intoxicating and he can't get enough of her. He recognizes it for what it is, and he's riding the wave, hoping he never comes down but knowing that inevitably, gravity will assert itself.

When he's in the moment with her, though … Sam isn't a man to toss around the word 'joy' lightly. But joy, it is.

Even the parts where he finds himself baking cupcakes with her. Even being dragged out of bed at midnight to put on a paper party hat and stand on her father's doorstep. Even that.

Domestic. The perfect boyfriend. For as long as he can fake it. If it makes her happy, if it generates that smile of hers, totally worth it.

And he feels equal parts awe, and gratitude, and relief, that she isn't faking. She actually wants to be with him.

One thing about McNally, there's zero subterfuge to her. She gives with her whole body and soul. It's a model of generosity that he's trying to learn from.

If their relationship is the worst-kept secret in the squad by now, he no longer cares. Though, okay, it gives him pause when Noelle calls him out on the "twinkle in his eye and spring in his step", as she put it, and accuses him of being in love.

It's not a word that he has dared to apply to the situation just yet. Joy, yes. Love ….

Love? Well, that's heavy. And he doesn't want to feel heavy just yet. He's feeling lighter than he has in years. Maybe ever.

She's just … something else. Something new.

But there are moments when he gets these little internal panic attacks.

He figures it's a remnant from the Brennan thing. Not that he ever told her about what exactly happened in that farmhouse. Not that he ever explained about the nightmares. They're sort of under control, and really, what would be the point? She would only take on a major case of guilt. He just doesn't want her to feel that way about it. Doesn't want to drag her into the dark little closet where his monsters lurk. Best just to keep it under wraps.

But every now and then, the whole thing gets a little claustrophobic. McNally, she can be a little … intense. Sometimes it's like he's got one of the mounted unit's Belgian-cross beasts with the dinner-plate hooves, standing on his chest. Needs to escape, needs to decompress. Hence the early morning departures. He's got various excuses: needs to get a run in before work, promised to shoot some hoops with Jerry, has to run home and pick up something. And it isn't till he's out the door that he feels like he can inhale again.

He's trying to find a balance. And it's a struggle. As good as this new chapter of his life is, he doesn't want to obliterate everything that made Sam who he was up until now. There are times when he feels like he's losing himself.

So when McNally mentions that she'd been neglecting her friends, he encourages her to plan a girls' night out. Practically pushes her out the door. And with a certain sense of triumph, he heads to the Friday night poker game from which he'd been absent for some time now.

He's hailed like Spartacus back from the wars, or something. With a certain amount of sarcasm. And smirking.

He intends to wipe those smirks right off Ollie and Jerry's sorry faces by the end of the night, but the cards aren't really cooperating. He's actually down $30 by 9:30 when Oliver fires his empty beer bottle into the blue box in the corner with a practised arm, and shoves his chair back. "My brothers, I appreciate the cash infusion. Or Izzy's orthodontist does. But I gotta get myself home before Zoe locks me out again."

Sam's eyebrows climb towards his hairline. Seriously, nine _thirty_? There's whipped, and then there's … well, Ollie. "Are you kidding me? I haven't even gotten started kicking your ass, Shaw."

But there's Jerry, gathering up the bowls of peanuts and cheezies and heading to the kitchen with them. Jesus, him too?

"Jerry …. buddy," Sam implores. "C'mon, whatever happened to a decent guy's night? You're shutting us down at this hour?" It's not the thirty bucks. He really, really doesn't want to quit playing yet … and he doesn't really want to go home to an empty house tonight either. McNally will be out dancing with Nash and Peck and likely Epstein, honourary girlfriend that he is, till the wee hours, he's sure, and he'd already told himself a night off from their … recreations … was healthy, a good thing for both of them.

But Jerry shakes his head. "Sorry, Sammy, got plans. I'm meeting up with Traci at the club in a bit." Okay, Jerry's always been more of a dancer than Sam. No wonder he's still in his Saturday Night Fever suit. Sam just hadn't really registered that Barber and Nash had become such a … a _thing_. When had that happened?

He can't resist razzing Jerry a bit about it. "What, am I the only single guy in the room these days? The only one not on a short leash? Christ, Barber." If there's a hint of bitterness in his tone, he hadn't meant for it to be there, but that's how it's coming out.

But Jerry's letting it roll off. He just smiles benevolently. "I tell you what, Sammy, I'm going to take every minute with that woman that I can."

Over his shoulder, from the kitchen, he adds, "And I'm putting a ring on her finger, first chance I get."

If Sam's eyebrows were north of their usual position before, they rocketed another notch skyward at this admission. This was Jerry, whose divorce had been such a trainwreck that Sam figured it had permanently cured him of the whole notion of matrimony. It's not like he hadn't known he and Nash were seeing each other, but he'd assumed they were fuckbuddies. He'd had no idea it was that kind of serious. But apparently he's the only one who's been wandering around clueless, because Shaw doesn't look in the least surprised. He's just nodding in approval.

Sam suddenly feels like some sort of endangered species about to be stuffed and mounted in a glass case. Oliver doesn't really count, of course. He and Zoe had been together since high school, and were married and pumping out kids before Ollie even left the academy. Sam can't begin to imagine him single. But Jerry …. Hell, the whole damn station was pairing up; even stalwart Noelle had hooked up with Best. And he realizes, as the eyebrows descend and his forehead creases with the processing of it all, that he's still identifying himself as the lone wolf.

And really, is he? And does he still want to be?

Shaw, shrugging on his coat, is watching the gears turn in Sam's head with gentle amusement. He slaps him on the shoulder. "Whatcha looking so terrified about, Sammy? It's called growing up."

For Sam, who's been feeling like it's all been a bit too much normal, it's something he's going to have to chew on.


	10. Chapter 10: Without A Fight

_This one was hard. Which is probably why I've been putting it off. I'm still not sure I really captured what I wanted to convey here, but please let me know if I came close. _

_All the usual disclaimers apply._

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"_**...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."**____**  
**__**―**____Herman Melville__,__Moby Dick_

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Sam's turning the watch over and over in his hands.

There's a roaring in his ears, and his skull feels kind of detached as he stares with unfocused eyes at the silver trinket. Because he just can't process the contradiction.

The watch is ticking, steady and strong. And the man who gave it to him is dead.

Sam kind of knew even as he watched the EMTs load Jerry into the bus. Something in his gut told him that even though they'd worked feverishly on him and gotten his heart started again, it wasn't going to last. That all those happy plans – tux fittings, and glossy brochures of tropical destinations, boutonnieres and bachelor parties – weren't going to happen now.

Maybe it was his gut, and maybe it the size of the lake of blood left on the hardwood floor after they picked Jerry up and left.

But he'd followed the bus to the hospital, sirens and lights cutting a swath through the downtown traffic. Hoping his gut was wrong, telling himself the EMTs have pulled more than one miracle out of their asses, desperately wanting the happy ending that one whackjob with a blade had obliterated in an instant.

Distantly, he watches Andy break the news to Traci. Registers Jerry's fiancée's face crumpling in grief.

Now he just doesn't know where he's supposed to go from this plastic waiting-room chair.

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Andy has her hands full, being there for her best friend. And that's actually a relief for Sam. Because he wants nothing more than to have nothing to do with anybody.

That first night, he went home in a daze and drank himself senseless. Seeing as Frank had already given him the next day off, he didn't see a reason not to.

There were three or four texts from Andy, but he didn't reply to any of them.

He isn't sure what time it is when he pulls himself off the floor, peels his tongue off the roof of his mouth, and drags himself into the shower. He's doing it out of habit more than anything else. It's not like he actually feels the temperature of the water or gives a rat's ass whether he's presentable or not.

A couple more texts from Andy. They're as non-invasive as Andy can manage to be, really – Traci managed to get a little sleep, hope you were able to do the same, call me when you have a minute, that sort of thing. He gets that she's trying not to be in his face, but he knows all the same that she doesn't _do_ time and space. And that's what he so desperately needs.

How much time? Right now, feels like forever.

But there are two shifts of work to get through before. Before the funeral.

He gets paired up with Shaw for the first one, thank gawd. Both of them make a couple of feeble attempts at telling tall tales about Barber as they patrol up and down the streets and back alleys of Kensington Market. But it's too new, too raw, and in the end they both just end up silent and brooding. In a companionable sort of way.

It's not okay, but it's the best they can do.

He's back in the car with Andy for the second shift. And she's trying, she really is, but she's getting on his very last nerve. Every word out of her mouth, every concerned glance from her with the doe eyes and the creased forehead, frankly makes him want to throttle her. He pinches the bridge of his nose, counts to ten, tries to remind himself that it's not _her_, that just about everything is making him see red, including the amazing number of asshats there are on the street that day. That anger is part of the process.

And yeah, he's pretty fucking angry.

But the more she tries to force innocuous conversation about something, anything else, the more Sam's brain is stuck on a single channel. Jerry. Jerry being dead.

And Traci's grief.

And what if it was McNally? Could he survive?

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Dress blues. White gloves. Spit-polished shoes, getting splattered with mud as a dreary, steady rain falls at the cemetery.

Sam stands apart from the rookies. Holding it together. Face tight, teeth clenched, but holding it together.

He lets Ollie and Noelle be the hand-holders. It's never been what he's good at. Turns on his heel and marches out of there before he falls apart completely.

She doesn't need to see that. No-one does.

And even as his brain replays the promises he's made ….

"I'm there when it matters."

And "You're not getting rid of me without a fight."

Even then, he's coming to one inescapable conclusion. And it makes his throat tight.

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Does it ever stop raining anymore?

That's as close as he can come to coherent thought, as he drives away that night, leaving her in the parking lot, strings of wet hair hanging in her face, trying and failing to keep that lip from trembling.

Those soft lips.

Has it been raining ever since Jerry was killed? Seems that way.

He's not sure how he gets home. Doesn't remember parking the truck or putting the key in the door.

All he knows is he's inside, and he's got his hand wrapped around a glass of Scotch. And he notices, with sudden, laser clarity, that his hand is shaking.

And then he's on the floor, leaning up against the cabinets, and suddenly he can't get any air into his lungs at all.

And he sits in that dark kitchen and sobs and gasps like a fucking infant, until his body can't do it anymore.


	11. Chapter 11: When It Matters

_And so we come to the last instalment … at least until the writers reveal what they're going to do about these two in Season Four. Thanks so much for all your comments and encouragement. Would love to know how I did with this final one! To be continued at some point this summer, maybe. _

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"_**Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?"**____**  
**_― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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The growing realization that he hasn't made anything better, creeps up on him slowly, like mold growing up a piece of drywall.

Just the way she'd crept into his heart in the first place.

The irony is not lost on him.

For a few, brief days, it feels like … well, if not freedom, then at least the satisfaction of a difficult choice, well made and settled.

Actually that might only have lasted a few hours. If he's honest.

He lets anger propel him for a while, because it's easy and it's getting him out the door in the morning. Though he's not sure who he's pissed at, anymore. Jerry, for walking into a situation without backup in the first place. Himself, for not reading that situation better. For not getting there faster. For not somehow keeping all that blood from seeping out of his friend. And McNally. Because she's an easy target.

And the rest of the world mostly because he's just not a forgive-and-forget type of guy.

But he just can't sustain it against the grief and the guilt and his suddenly empty house.

Mold. It's the first image that comes to mind, given that he has thrown himself into renovating his bathroom, with a fury that only power tools can gratify.

Behind the tiles he's pulling off the wall in the shower is a cancer of black mold. Spreading outward from behind the faucet, turning the centre of the drywall into spore-ridden mush and the edges into some sort of toxic bleu-cheese crumble.

And the more of it he pulls away with his claw hammer, the more he discovers.

And if his own insides start to feel a little more like a black hole eating away at him, spiralling out to encompass a new organ every day that he sees her at parade, sweeping past him in the doorway of the locker room with eyes as skittish as a rabbit's, ducking out the door of the Penny as soon as he arrives … well, Sam figures he deserves it.

At first, his brain stuck by the decision, and it's a pretty convincing tale it was spinning. _Better for everyone in the long run. It was never going to work in the first place and I _knew_ that going in, tried to tell her that even. It wasn't fair to her or anyone else to drag it out any further._

That the only reason he feels like such an asshat is that he's hurt her, and every fibre of her being tells him that, because McNally, she's pretty much hopeless at hiding it. She doesn't say a word, but her body language, rigid and defensive, lips pressed together in a thin line, is unmistakable. (And then there are the hang-ups on his voicemail, each one a little sadder in its silence, till finally they peter out and there's just … more silence.)

So yeah, he'll take the punches, because the whole fucking mess was his fault. Not that Ollie, or Noelle, or even Epstein or Peck, are letting him forget it, from the looks they're giving him from across the squad. Clearly _everyone_ thinks he's an asshat.

That's okay, because it's fuelling the anger and frankly, it needs a little fuel.

A few weeks go by. And she reminds him just how strong she was when her nice, safe relationship with Luke blew up in her face. He watches from a distance as she picks herself up, chin tight and eyes hard and opaque. She's silently daring him to get in her face because she's not going to make room for him at the coffee-maker anymore.

Makes him sad all over again, because that openness in her is gone. She looks five years older. His fault. He hopes that at least she can let her guard down when he's not around. When Traci, still awash in grief, needs her friend.

And at the same time, the gaping hollow in his gut, and the clenched fist around his heart, are starting to slowly get a message through to his clueless brain. They're telling him, unequivocally, that he has pushed away the best thing he never deserved, and that of all the royal fuck-ups in his life, this might just top them all.

Which is pretty much what Ollie says when he finally has had enough of it and explodes one night at the end of their shift.

Sam, of course, deflects, because that's what Sam does, and because he's nowhere near willing to admit Shaw is right.

But it gets worse. Callaghan, of all people, takes it upon himself to try and knock some sense into him one night at the Penny. Quietly, and apparently sincerely. Which is kind of hard to process.

And then there's that earnest Labrador of a rookie, Diaz, calling him out for being a bad cop. Freakin' _Diaz_, who, after Sam tunes him out, turns out to have the cojones to go to Best.

That gets Sam a good stern talking to, and the threat of desk duty if he can't get his shit together.

Humility is not Sam's strong suit. It takes another day before he admits that Diaz isn't wrong. Being out of control on the streets … not something he's proud of.

The depth and magnitude of his own stupidity is starting to startle even him. What felt like the brave and righteous thing to do just a few weeks ago, is now starting to feel like the worst display of cowardice he's managed yet.

Good thing his gut has metaphorically rotted away already, because otherwise it would be twisted in knots by now.

Worst of all, he just _misses_ her like a physical ache, like a thousand broken ribs and a simultaneous concussion, misses every single damn thing about her so much it's like being locked back in Brennan's farmhouse being beaten with a pipe and not being able to lose consciousness.

If he thought that cutting Andy loose was going to help him sleep better at night after Jerry's death, well, that strategy had revealed some flaws. It's her absence in his bed that he really can't deal with. He has started avoiding the room altogether and just collapsing in exhaustion on the couch instead, with the TV blaring infomercials all night for company. Which of course is playing hell with his back and just making his mood all the more pleasant on the job.

As he's ripping the old bathroom cabinet off the wall late one Sunday afternoon, he finds a pink hair elastic that was hers. And it just about destroys him.

And however scary it is to realize he's been sitting motionless on his debris-covered bathroom floor for over an hour, drywall dust in his hair and the little cotton facemask from Home Depot dangling ridiculously under his chin, staring unblinkingly at a hair elastic, it's even more terrifying to understand that, given the way McNally walked away from Callaghan without a second glance, he doesn't really have a snowball's chance in hell of getting her back.

And he suddenly, desperately wants her back.

But she'd given her mother, who'd disappeared out of her life for 15 years, another chance, right? So.

He just knows if he doesn't try, then he's never going to be able to look at himself in the mirror again. Should he ever manage to get another mirror back on the wall.

Building bridges. Another one of those skill sets he generally leaves to other people. Noelle has a knack for it … Sam, he'd rather just blow 'em up and never look back. So essentially he's working without a net here.

She sweeps past him in the garage one morning, looking for Collins, and the dynamic is still so weird between them because he's her senior officer, so she has to be cordial, and he's starting to hate it. He's gripped by an overwhelming desire to say something … _anything_ … to her. He just wants to curl his hand around her elbow and see if she's still whole. Tuck that stray lock of hair behind her ear.

Wouldn't even mind if she up and slapped him.

And all he can come up with is asking for his fucking truck keys back. There's a fresh flash of hurt and disbelief behind her eyes. It's not what he meant to say at all.

Jesus, Swarek, if you're in a hole, for chrissakes stop digging.

It's only days later when the whole holding-cell shooting unravels and half the squad ends up doing video enquiries with the brass, and he comes skidding into 15 at the end of his shift feeling a bit frantic. He holds up a piece of wall at the end of the hallway and effortlessly falls into step with her when she cruises past, as they've done a thousand times before, and it's only when she rakes hard eyes across his face and asks him what he's doing here that he remembers.

Sam falters and says something lame about wanting to make sure she's okay. And what she tosses over her shoulder as she walks away from him just slices him in half, because he really hasn't realized it until now: "That's not your job anymore."

He has to force the whiskey past a big knot in his throat that night.

Even Sarah doesn't know how to fix it. He's been avoiding telling his sister because he knows she'd pinned her hopes on Andy being the one who could finally tame her lone-wolf little brother. He hasn't wanted to hear the disappointment in her voice. But he calls her one night because he doesn't know who else to talk to.

"Gawd, Sam, I never even got to meet her. How am I supposed to tell you how to get her back now? What am I supposed to say, 'just be yourself' or something?

"I hate to tell you, but if I were her, I wouldn't look back."

Being unforgiving apparently runs in the family.

Maybe it just can't be fixed.

All of which doesn't matter a rat's ass when it's Epstein's voice on the radio, saying he can't locate McNally. Sam's only instinct is to stampede in like the cavalry. His pulse is roaring in his ears as he sprints and skids through the catacombs of that basement. And then it stutters to a complete halt, along with his feet, when he sees her. And the grenade.

He holds it together well enough to get the little girl herded out of the danger zone, and to quiz ex-army Collins on exactly how much trouble she's in. Not that he doesn't already know.

And then it's just her, him and a bomb.

This feeling. This feeling is precisely what he never wanted to feel, what he had gone to such great lengths not to feel. The imminent danger of losing her. The absolute, stark terror of that surpasses everything he's ever felt as a cop. Its only measure, in terms of strength, is how he feels about the damage done to his sister all those decades ago.

And it makes him blurt out the one thing he has never known how to say.

It's so not the time for her to hear it. It's so utterly, completely wrong. But he feels compelled to say it, because it might be the last thing she ever hears, and the last thing he ever says, and he just can't leave it unsaid anymore. She needs to know.

When it's all over, and they're both still in one piece, she can't look him in the eye. He takes a tentative step towards her, hoping she'll let him in. She has to know how hard it was for him to say that. Right? That has to count for something, even if the timing sucked. But she turns on an unsteady heel and heads for the stairs, while he stares open-mouthed at the back of her head.

In tatters.

It's hours later when he finds her again in the locker room at Fifteen. He doesn't know how to restart a conversation begun over a grenade. Swallows hard, starts and then trails off, and some switch in his brain doesn't have a clue how to be this vulnerable and kicks him into comic-relief mode, which he instantly realizes is the worst possible thing he could have done. Idiot. Idiot. _Idiot._

What little receptivity there might have been in her face slams down like a garage door, and she whirls and heads for the exit.

And here's Sam Swarek, _way_ past dignity, running after her and begging for another chance in the middle of the squad. He really doesn't give a fuck who witnesses it anymore.

She has so much more capacity for seeing the good in people than he does. He hopes there's a chance she can still see it in him. But her expression – exasperated, disillusioned, disbelieving – is saying otherwise.

All he can do is leave it with her. "Just a drink? Please. Andy, give me a chance. I'll be at the Penny."

He spends the next four hours watching the door from his barstool, regret sinking into his bones. That she doesn't come through it, isn't really a surprise.


End file.
